Game 5...Extreme test...Minnesota Vikings!

[thunderkyss]

Guys get older, you cant expect him to be the same player he was in the 90's.

Well played my man. Well played.

 

[ObsiWan]

Here's another one.

http://www.sharpfootballanalysis.co...ng-draft-picks-spending-in-free-agency-losing

• The 3 most successful NFL teams over the last 3 seasons are the Seahawks, Patriots and Broncos. Each team has traded down at least twice as often as they traded up in the past 5 drafts.
• Four of the 5 least successful NFL teams over the last 3 seasons are the Jaguars, Buccaneers, Titans and Browns. Combined, they traded up 28 times and down only 6 times over the last 5 drafts! That’s 6 trades up to 1 down on average, for 5 consecutive years.

That’s NOT a coincidence. Its not just the direction of the trade (and the inherent value lost) its the total picks the teams then have to work with. To move up, you’re giving up more picks than you’re getting in return. It means you have less total picks to work with, and less forgiveness for the inevitable poor selections that come for any team on draft day.

Total Draft Picks Used vs Wins
Over the last 3 yrs:

• 10 teams used 27+ draft picks and 6 (60%) have winning records.
• 22 teams used 26 or fewer draft picks and 6 (27%) have winning records.

If you don’t have draft picks you can’t adequately build thru the draft, and are forced to spend more money to acquire (what you believe are) players to help you win games thru free agency. If you have a lot of draft picks, and use them efficiently, even though you will inevitably miss on a few, your team will be stocked with younger, less expensive players who can outperform older, more expensive veteran free agents from other teams.

This is a concept the best teams in the NFL understand, such as Seattle, New England, Green Bay, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Its not that they seem to simply be lucky to always see success, or at least very brief periods of difficult. They do the right things in the draft, in free agency, in other front office decisions, which allows them to rely on the talent they’ve brought in, the coaching, and the player development to bountifully produce wins, year in and year out.

Belichick said (I believe it was on the NFLN program "A Football Life" that featured him) the Patriots draft so late every year that it makes more sense for him to trade back and turn his 1st rd picks into additional picks in rds 2-4 because, he said, once you get beyond pick 15 you're mainly dealing with 2nd rd talent anyway. And very few of those guys have a real shot at supplanting one of his starters. So why not get more of the 2nd tier guys (good players but not your top 10-15 "blue chip" guys) who have a shot at being depth or being quality S/T players.

I'm not arguing against trading back. Quite the contrary. Unless you have a guy that you feel can crack your starting lineup in the first, why not trade back?

That "Jimmy Johnson" chart show almost no value once you get beyond pick 200 which is late 6th round. So stock piling 7th rd picks makes more sense if you can turn them into picks in rds 3-5 instead of hoping you hit the lotto with one or two of them.